Seeds of discord – the battle over golden rice

Whole Foods Markets and Eden Foods have underwritten Kimbrell’s efforts, and his Center for Food Safety has an advisory board populated mainly by organic agriculture activists. These include a registered “natural foods” lobbyist, the research director for Rodale Publishing’s Organic Gardening magazine and the director of the organic food industry’s largest accreditation service.

Kimbrell has become adept at scaring the public into believing that “natural” foods are its only salvation. Writing about biotech foods, he told an online magazine in 1997 that “if we have it labeled, then we can organize people not to buy it.” His groups spent over $2.5 million in each of the past three years organizing such campaigns for the “natural” food lobby.